Business and the economy come to life!

On my course, when you're a reporter on production days (when we run radio/TV news rooms) you usually put your name forward to cover a story for the day. Last week I decided to face my demon and take on an economics/business story. It's my Achilles’ heel and I'm determined to fill the gap in my knowledge.

My urge to learn more started a couple of weeks ago when my friend Nat visited. We started chatting about house prices, the credit crunch and Northern Rock. He was able to explain it all in a simple way that any decent broadcaster should. So I covered the Consumer Price Index inflation rise in to 2.2% story on Tuesday.

I interviewed the consumer champion Martin Lewis who runs moneysavingexpert.com (who also used to do our course!) which was a great experience having been a fan of his work for a while. I then rushed to Cardiff Journalism School to interview Calvin Jones who did a very good job of explaining in layman's terms how the inflation rise would affect consumers and the economy.

Once I had this material I put it together and it was aired for 'Wales at One' and 'Wales at Five' as a 3 minute feature.You can listen to how I dealt with the story by CLICKING HERE.

And if you'd like to listen to more of my interview with Martin Lewis, CLICK HERE.

I asked Calvin Jones how I can learn the essentials of the economy and business and he recommended a book called 'The Undercover Economist'. I best get reading so that next time I don't have to approach an economy business story with such apprehension!